Keith
_________________________________________________________
>Below are a number of messages in response to the thread with Holmes Rolston on
>"Genes, Genesis and God". The first posting is from Paul Arveson in Rockville,
>MD, who writes to elaborate on crystals and the creative power of inanimate
>matter. Arveson suggests that "dust is not nothing."
>
>The second and much longer posting is from John Carvalho at Washington
>University in St. Louis in response to Holmes Rolston's discussion of "Genes
>and the Adapted Mind" in Meta 098. Carvalho argues human ideas originate from
>epigenetic factors as well as epi-cultural factors. He argues that a
>metaphysical component of soul is necessary to render the adapted mind
>intelligible to itself.
>
>Carvalho writes "these epigenetic factors cannot be simply the cultural
>inheritance that we see in Rolston's article. Rolston's 'adapted mind'
>viewpoint must consider some creative component to the human condition that
>acts as a third element-one responsible for the initiation of cultural
>novelty." As we will read in Rolston's next installment on "Genes, Genesis,
>and God," this is not unlike what he himself will advocate. Stay tuned.
>
>Finally, George Ellis <ellis@maths.uct.ac.za> writes from Cape Town, South
>Africa to alert us a recent book review in Nature of relevance to this
>discussion. Ellis writes: "your readers might be interested in the rather
>acerbic and penetrating review by Gabby Dover of 'The Origin of Life' (Maynard
>Smith and Szamary) in Nature Vol 399: 217-218 (20 May 1999). It starts of as
>follows: 'One of the sadistic pleasures to be had from the defunct age of
>selfish-genery was to witness the mental loops of its proponents as they tried
>to extricate themselves from the illogical cul-de-sacs of their own devising.'"
>
>-- Billy Grassie
>
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>From: "Paul Arveson" <bridges@his.com>
>Subject: dust is not nothing
>
>Rolston wrote:
>
>"The elegance of the thirty-two crystal classes is not to be confused with the
>grace of life renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing, generating
>diversity and complexity, repeatedly struggling through to something higher, a
>response to the brooding winds of the Spirit moving over the face of these
>earthen waters. The genes do bubble up from below ("cranes"--if one insists on
>looking down) but these genes are lofted higher and higher in their creative
>genius, resulting in course in the genius of the human spirit, elevated enough
>to look the world over and ask ultimate questions--debating, as we are doing,
>the best metaphors for what has been taking place on this Earth."
>
>Picking up on the crystal classes, there is something worthy of elaboration
>here. If you have seen a mineral exhibit at a good museum such as the
>Smithsonian, you have probably become aware of the existence of spectacular and
>bizarre structures formed by "nothing but time, chance, and matter".
>Nevertheless, these crystals in all their isomorphs and special forms -- which
>have shapes and symmetries that extend well beyond those of the formal crystal
>classes -- have in many cases never been fully explained. The creative powers
>of matter are indeed fruitful in surprising ways that never could have been
>inferred until we found these objects deep in the earth or under the sea.
>
>The Biblical metaphor speaks of Adam being created from the dust of the ground
>into which the Spirit was breathed. This story also confirms that dust is far
>from nothing -- dust is an inexhaustibly rich substrate not only for life, but
>also for beauty and fantasy.
>
>Paul Arveson
>
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>From: "John J. Carvalho" <jjcarval@artsci.wustl.edu>
>To: <meta@templeton.org>
>Subject: The Scope of Evolutionary Reductionism in the Origination of Cultural
>Ideas
>
>In his article "Genes and an Adapted Mind (Meta, 097, 1999)," Holmes Rolston
>III argues that the evolution of culture is not subordinated to the genetic
>constraints of the individual or population. Rolston stands in stark contrast
>to the Sociobiology Program, which contends that genetic constraints restrict
>human behavior and, therefore, the origination of cultural novelties and their
>propagation in history. The argument between Rolston and the Sociobiologists
>is by no means a new one. In fact, biologists Levine and Suzuki explain this
>problem succinctly:
>
>"It is an undeniable fact of biology that an individual's genome affects the
>construction and operation of his or her brain. But the extent to which
>specific DNA sequences control and determine human behavior remains an open
>question" (Levine and Suzuki, 1993).
>
>Undoubtedly, the genetic framework is an important component to Homo sapiens.
>It is virtually unanimous amongst biologists that genes do have some control
>over human intelligence. Nevertheless, Rolston emphasizes, quite rightly, that
>cultural inheritance is at least to some degree autonomous from genetics:
>
>"Ideas are discovered and transmitted, and the mechanism of transmission is
>cultural. One does not have to have Plato's genes to be a Platonist, Darwin's
>genes to be a Darwinian, or Jesus' genes to be a Christian. The thinkers
>responsible for shifting physics to a Copernican view, biology to a Darwinian
>view, and ethics to universal human rights were not from any particular racial
>or ethnic group. The system of inheritance of ideas is independent of the
>system of inheritance of genes." (Meta 097, 1999)
>
>Rolston's position is echoed by John Polkinghorne:
>
>"No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have molded our
>ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding
>the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by the pressures
>for survival. Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend
>the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macroworld of big bang cosmology,
>is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate
>by-product of the struggle for life." (Polkinghorne, 1998)
>
>Though these scholars give credence to the existence of epigenetic forces
>responsible for shaping culture in human populations, they do not entirely
>eliminate the counter arguments of the Sociobiologists. Those in the
>Sociobiology Program may suggest that there exists a certain reservoir of
>genetic material, which is passed along from parent to offspring, that places
>us in the species human. This conserved material, it may be defended, is
>sheltered from evolutionary history only in so far that any attempt at change
>would result in "non-human." Such a component to the genetic framework may
>exist as the foundational biology responsible for allowing us to make the
>decision to transmit culture from older to younger generations (vertical
>cultural evolution) or allow us to imitate our peers as a mechanism for
>cultural propagation (horizontal cultural evolution).
>
>To truly investigate the validity of the Sociobiologists' claim, we must
>actually explore beyond "propagation" of ideas in culture. We must understand
>whether or not the very "origination" of these ideas are genetically or
>epigenetically based. Rolston, in his article, speaks about the transmission
>of ideas-the "evolution of the software"-as he calls it, but he does not really
>address the issue of how these ideas even come about. Likewise, the
>Sociobiologists contend that ideas are reducible to the genes, but they never
>really explore how the origination of novelty can arise in a biologically
>predestined organism. In fact, it is this very lack of a comprehensive
>explanation for reductionism that has led many philosophers of biology, most
>notably Ernst Mayr, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard
>University, to rebuke the reductionist paradigm. Mayr denounces any vitalistic
>component to living organisms, but he is a strong proponent of recognizing the
>different types of reductionism. In his "Growth of Biological Thought," he
>distinguishes between constitutive, explanatory, and theory reductionism, and
>ultimately asserts that the differences between inorganic matter and life is in
>the "organization" of biological systems, not in the "composition" of life.
>This understanding of "emergentism" as a separating factor of the living world
>from the inorganic universe is echoed in "Toward a New Philosophy of Biology":
>
>"Systems at each hierarchical level have two properties. They act as wholes
>(as though they were a homogeneous entity), and their characteristics cannot be
>deduced (even in theory) from the most complete knowledge of the components,
>taken separately or in other combinations. In other words, when such a system
>is assembled from its components, new characteristics of the whole emerge that
>could not have been predicted from a knowledge of the constituents. Such
>emergence of new properties occurs also throughout the inanimate world, but
>only organisms show such a dramatic emergence of new characteristics at every
>hierarchical level of the system. Indeed, in hierarchically organized
>biological systems one may even encounter downward causation." (Mayr, 1988)
>
>But is Mayr truly able to explain the emergence of cultural ideas if life is
>reducible in the sense of "composition?" In fact it can be argued that this
>form of reductionism, which Mayr accepts, must be taken further.
>Sociobiologists might claim that the genetic "component" allows for a
>reductionism of the origination and propagation of cultural ideas to
>evolutionary theory based on natural selection. Hence, we arrive at a
>philosophy that suggests natural selection will select for a reservoir of
>genetic material that is responsible for the condition "human."
>
>This argument, though provocative, has a number of problems. First, we must
>understand that there is a component of evolutionary reductionism that is based
>on the present functionalist-reductionist neurobiological paradigm. Certainly,
>some scholars will take issue with this assertion, but it is apparent that most
>biologists who hold a reductionist view seem to be in general agreement on this
>point. Essentially, the theory states that all human behavior and mental
>processes ultimately stem from the biological framework. Every activity,
>whether it be physically manifested to others or internally contained (such as
>apprehensions in the mind and self-awareness) is "entirely" reducible to the
>material processes of the organism in relation to the organism's environment.
>The subject has no choice available because "free will" is an illusion arising
>out of the unavoidable biochemical reactions in the human brain. Or, at best,
>the choice that we do have is constrained, limited and the sole result of
>biochemical mechanisms. In essence, human beings are "reactionaries" and any
>deceiving, apparent action is nothing more than a biological necessity that is
>crucial to the organism's perpetuation or the perpetuation of the species.
>Essentially, this philosophy lays at the core of the Sociobiology paradigm.
>Otherwise, the Sociobiologists could not claim the dominance of genetics over
>human behavior.
>
>Unfortunately, a host of flaws accompany this form of neurophilosophy. For
>one, functionalist-reductionism fails to adequately explain how human beings
>grasp "universal concepts" when in fact each individual manifests "uniqueness"
>both in his genetic framework and his particular history of environmental
>conditions. Since no individual possesses the "exact" genetic composition
>"and" environmental history, each of our neurocircuitry and the stimuli that
>would influence our neurocircuitry "must" be different. Such a dissimilarity
>in the matter of the brain and the history of the individual would compel
>people to harbor a complete and different perception and understanding of
>reality and interpretation of reality. Since humans would possess this
>dissimilarity, the human mind would necessarily be incapable of comprehending
>universal principles. One of the common illustrations of this is when we think
>of the idea "2 + 2 = 4." When one apprehends this mathematical example, he may
>see in his mind a black chalk board with white colored numerical symbols
>displaying the equation. Another person might visualize in his mind two sets
>of two apples and a set of four apples separated by a mathematical equality
>sign. So far, this scenario supports a functionalist-reductionist theory
>because of material and historical differences between individuals. The
>disparity is abolished, however, when we come to realize that each person does
>understand the "math." In fact, St. Augustine revealed this in his famous
>dialogue with Evodius (Wipple and Wolter, 1969). This break in
>functionalist-reductionist logic suggests that there exists some other element
>to the human condition, unsupported by the Sociobiologists, that allows humans
>to grasp universals in all situations.
>
>There is another formidable argument against the Sociobiologists' position. If
>we agree that "reason" is the determining factor that separates human beings
>from other species in the biosphere, then one would propose, correctly, that a
>reservoir of genetic material is "responsible" for reason. The ability to
>understand universals and "generate" ideas and concepts would itself be
>reducible to these genes. However, such a reductionism is problematical for
>the fact that all biological processes are "triggered" to occur. DNA
>replication, transcription, protein synthesis, cellular respiration, electrical
>flow between neurons, even the SA node firing in the right atrium of the heart
>are all, in some way or another, excited. There exists no biological system
>that can work without first being activated by another system. When it comes
>to human thought, however, mental actions can arise arbitrarily. Human beings
>can initiate in the human mind without being stimulated to "necessarily"
>initiate. Likewise, human beings can choose to ignore certain stimuli and so
>pose their actions differently. The "free will" of human beings transcends
>their biological constraints regardless of whether or not the physical world
>allows such freedom to be manifested. To a large degree the ancient Greek
>philosopher Epictetus recognized this truth. Epictetus philosophized that we
>cannot always control the situations in our life but we can usually command the
>way we react or respond to them.
>
> In light of these findings, it appears that the Sociobiologists must
>acknowledge that the origination of ideas must stem from epigenetic factors or,
>at least, epigenetic factors in harmony with genetic factors. However, these
>epigenetic factors cannot be simply the cultural inheritance that we see in
>Rolston's article. Rolston's "adapted mind" viewpoint must consider some
>creative component to the human condition that acts as a third element-one
>responsible for the initiation of cultural novelty. Since this third element
>to the human condition is neither biologically based or
>culturally-environmentally based, it must exist as a metaphysical, as opposed
>to physical, pole in the human condition. It must be something inherent; a
>component capable of creating or initiating the arisal of new form, not a
>reactionary, biochemical machine bereft of agency and destined to only respond
>to external stimuli or succumb to the limitations imposed on it by DNA. Nor
>can it be subordinate to the environment or capable of only receiving and
>analyzing information from predecessors (older generations handing down
>cultural ideas to younger generations). Essentially, then, it must be the soul
>or the spiritual.
>
> The demise of a pure, evolutionary reductionism and the inadequacy of a
>cultural inheritance that lacks a creative component to the species human leads
>us to realize that the human condition is composed of three parts: two physical
>poles (genetics and the environment) and one metaphysical (the soul or the
>spiritual). Only in this way can we understand a gene-culture co-evolution
>that consists of the arisal of new form and its subsequent propagation to
>offspring throughout time.
>
>References:
>
>Rolston H. (1999) "Genes and an Adapted Mind." Meta: Science and Religion.
>Vol 097.
>
>Levine J. and D. Suzuki. (1993) The Secret of Life: Redesigning the Living
>World. Boston: WGBH.
>
>Mayr E. (1988) Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an
>Evolutionist. Harvard University Press.
>
>Polkinghorne J. (1998) Belief in God in an Age of Science. Yale University
>Press.
>
>Augustine, St. (1969) "De Quantitate Animae." Medieval Philosophy: From St.
>Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa. Ed. J. Wipple and A.B. Wolter. New York: The
>Free Press.
>
>
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>
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/